One of the drawbacks in upgrading to a new computer system or purchasing an additional main system involves the complexity in transferring data, settings and application programs from an existing computer system to the new computer system. One attempt to assist users in migrating such data was invented by Microsoft Corporation, and was implemented in a connection cable that coupled one computer system to the new computer system. Once coupled, the cable contained (in flash memory) the necessary drivers and other software to thereafter to some extent automatically handle the data migration tasks.
However, the design of that solution was somewhat flawed, in that data transfer was seen as too slow. Further, the cable had a low mean-time-between failure number, and in general cost too much, primarily as a result of the amount of flash memory that was incorporated into the cable to store the drivers and other software needed to accomplish the migration. Still further, once in a user's possession there was no easy or enforceable way to update this flash, such as to deal with bugs, and it was also difficult to include software in flash for the many varieties of operating systems that would be desirable to support. As a result, that design never became a ubiquitous computer-to-computer data migration solution.